Consumers generally desire that electronic products be as small and lightweight as possible. As flat panel displays grow in capability and widespread application, it is not unusual for the size of a product to be driven by the size of the display, with great pressure to make the rest of the product fit within a minimal volume. Two dimensions of that volume are frequently defined by the 2D footprint of the flat panel display. With the increasing desirability of product “thinness,” it becomes increasingly desirable to make thinner layers, to combine layers, and/or to eliminate layers from the product. Examples of product layers include, but are not limited to, clear windows to protect the display, airgaps between the protective window and the display, frontlights in front of the display, touch screens, plastic films with optical functionalities, the display front glass, the active layers of the display, the display back glass, backlights behind the display, PC boards, plastic films carrying interconnections, and plastic and metal layers comprising the physical enclosure of the product.
The predominant display used in manufacturing handheld portable electronic devices is currently the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). The principal layers of the LCD include a front glass, a back glass, and several plastic optical films. Due to the nature of an LCD, both the front plate and the back plate of the LCD serve as active or functional components of the LCD, placing limitations on the degree to which layers can be combined, eliminated, and/or replaced with a thinner layer in order to decrease the thickness of the overall display. In addition, the active nature of both plates of an LCD places limitations on the materials which can be used in those plates, and therefore the strength and durability of the plates. If additional strength and/or protection is required beyond what can be provided using materials suitable for the LCD plates, other layers of material may be required in addition to the LCD plates, potentially adding to the thickness, weight, and cost of the device.
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) include micro mechanical elements, actuators, and electronics. Micromechanical elements may be created using deposition, etching, and or other micromachining processes that etch away parts of substrates and/or deposited material layers or that add layers to form electrical and electromechanical devices. One type of MEMS device is called an interferometric modulator. An interferometric modulator may comprise a pair of conductive plates, one or both of which may be transparent and/or reflective in whole or part and capable of relative motion upon application of an appropriate electrical signal. One plate may comprise a stationary layer deposited on a substrate, the other plate may comprise a metallic membrane separated from the stationary layer by an air gap. Such devices have a wide range of applications, and it would be beneficial in the art to utilize and/or modify the characteristics of these types of devices so that their features can be exploited in improving existing products and creating new products that have not yet been developed.